


He Do the Police in Different Voices

by halloa_what_is_this



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Other, The Waste Land, began this way before season 3, poetry fusion, so post-Reichenbach, t s eliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halloa_what_is_this/pseuds/halloa_what_is_this
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The name has a story. It is the working title of The Waste Land, borrowed by Eliot from Dicken's <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> because of the multitude of voices present in the poem. <a href="http://hedothepolice.org/about/title.html">Read more</a></p>
<p>Mine has only one voice but he speaks for all of them. And because I can never be as good as Eliot, I steal what I can, even the scraps.</p>
<p>Read the poem <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html">here</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	He Do the Police in Different Voices

**I.**                 ** _The Burial of the Dead_**

 

It’s always harder in the spring, in April, when the rains begin to feel warmer and the last of the snow storms have ceased to disrupt the movements of people still going on with their lives. Then he suddenly remembers all the stories he listened to in the light of the fire with the spring rain falling fast outside, of when he was a child, living months at a time in the Swiss mountainside with his cousins, a carefree child sliding down the hills with a sled, shrieking cousin holding on to his neck. He would smile then, skip forward a few years to the times when he was old enough to travel by himself, went to Germany and met someone near the Starnberger See, took the train to Münich to see Hofgarten. He never went into details, never told him who it was that had been with him, so he allowed himself to imagine himself with him on those trips, the two of them far away from Baker Street walking together, laughing, stopping for coffee and talk.

He remembers and doesn’t forget until next winter, when all the traces of summer, of the horrible June, are washed away by the cold.

He never looked back on these memories in the winter, when even London was covered in thick piles of snow and the windows froze shut. He sat in his chair in the sitting room of Baker Street, letting the snow help him forget. He read at night, slept during the day, went south to see even more snow and the frozen sea. With the first spring showers came the memories, melting the forgetful snow, forcing him to acknowledge the empty chair opposite himself while before there was a man crouched in it, fingers pressed together under the chin.

                      _In the mountains, there you feel free._

Said the man who loved the buzzing and crowds of London, never moved too far away lest he would feel too isolated from the civilisation, the clean air destroying his lungs.

For the first year he had not felt like a human being at all, pile of rubble trying to regrow something living out of dead stone. That’s what he was for the first twelve months: marble, white and cold like the skin of the man he had buried during the cursed summer showers. Sixteen months, and he still saw a shadow of someone else beside his own following him to work in the morning, welcoming him home in the evening.

Now he had three shadows walking him everywhere, on the left there was the tall shadow of a man, on the right the petite shadow of a woman, shorter than even he himself. Eyes the same as his, golden hair, nose so thickly dotted with freckles he often lulled himself to sleep at night by counting them while he held the wrist under which the pulse of a living heart still kept drumming.

This was now reality, this woman, Mary, and the memories of the man striding so fast he had to run to keep up a mere dream he had to forget.

He tried. He forgot the broken images, he avoided the bottle unlike his sister had done, though it tried to lure him like a blessed shadow of a rock on a hot day. He failed, once or twice, but got up because what was lurking under the stone was even more horrible than the broken images and dreams still weighing his shoulders down.

He tried. Every day he tried to think of blonde hair before black curls when he woke up in the morning. Every day he tried to remember to put only milk in the other cup of tea, not both sugar and milk like before. Now he had to remember days in other ways than before, when he had to remind himself whether he had a shift at the surgery or if he was free to run around London trying to find a murderer, or a forger, or a butcher’s that sold pig’s blood in a one litre carton. Now he had to think about day and night shifts, birthdays and anniversaries, Sunday dinners and how long it took to cook potatoes.

“You gave me flowers when we first met, remember?”

Arms full of pink and purple flowers that made him look like a courier when he heard the pearly laughter and saw the freckled nose. She was sitting on a terrace of a café on the other side of the street, and immediately he began to count the freckles he could see from where he had stopped next to a florist’s on Oxford Street. Without thinking, he had purchased the first bunch of flowers he could reach, crossed the busy road and handed the flowers to the girl who was still laughing. Few words exchanged, as well as phone numbers on pieces of napkin she found from under her plate, and he strolled away, realising that for the first time in months he had not felt the tall man breathing over his shoulder.

“They called me ‘the hyacinth girl’, my friends, after you left.”

He remembers, like he remembers the time in the gardens. They had gone to buy spring flowers for the flat. It had rained, and she had appeared before him with her hair wet, embracing the hyacinths to her breast, and suddenly he could not speak. He could not see her clearly, in the doorway filled with light she was a black spot in all the blinding white light and silence.

He didn’t feel alive, as he should have. He didn’t feel dead, either. Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, he went to her, picked up the flowers and took her hand. The warm palm against his was solid and firm, and suddenly, finally he felt very much like a breathing human being again.

He had felt alive with him, the tall man, without physical contact he had felt oh, so alive! He had not needed to feel the calluses on his fingers left by his constant violin playing, and somehow he felt he wasn’t even allowed to touch. Now that he could have it, he needed to feel the skin and the heartbeat beneath it, and so he grabbed her wrist every morning the minute he opened his eyes. Counting the freckles in time with the heartbeat, one-two, three-four, five-six.

They had walked home, stopped at a carnival on the way. She wanted candy floss, and he was still holding the flowers for her when an elderly woman came out from her tent, winked at him and promised to read his fortune. _Madame Sosotris, clairvoyante_ said the sign spread over her tent, and he went in with a smile.

“I am the wisest woman in Europe,” said madame in her broken English, lighting incense sticks, making the air in the room even muskier and somehow darker than it had been. She directed him towards a chair, flowers still in hand he sat down and watched her shuffle the pack of tarots. She placed them before her, perused a while, performed some required tricks unknown to him and lifted a card.

“This is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor. Look, those are pearls that were his eyes!”

And he stares at the card, squeezing the flowers tightly. Stares at the mop of wet black hair covering the sailor’s forehead and eyes, water dripping from the fringe could as easily be dark blood as clear sea water. He doesn’t hear the explanations for the next three (Belladonna, Man with Three Staves and Wheel) but startles when she speaks of the one-eyed Merchant and the last blank card, that is something hidden, she says, that she is not allowed, is unable to see.

He is already fed up with her and her visions and ready to leave when she grasps his arm and whispers:

“Fear death by water! Fear death by water!”

Shivers run through him, he thinks of the drowned sailor, reminds himself that once again she is wrong. He did not drown, he fell.

He gives her a few pounds from his pocket and turns to leave.

“I can’t find the Hanged Man,” he hears her mutter over the shuffling of her cards. “The martyr is hiding between heaven and hell.”

Fresh air and Mary’s deep blue eyes waiting for him outside clear his head. She laughs quietly and asks him whether he heard something good, will he meet a tall dark stranger? He laughs at the joke and hides his stinging eyes in her hair.

London feels unreal suddenly, thick with fog and the Bridge is full of shuffling people and eyes fixed on their feet. But she is still happy, not minding the cold and the promise of even more rain later. They’re almost home and she just wants a cup of tea and a blanket for the rest of the afternoon.

“Watson!” comes a cry from the fog.

He turns in search of the source and is met by a man so tall he seems to be hovering like a giant over everyone else on the bridge. Loud bark of laughter and arms clapped around him that almost crack his ribs and the man explains with a clear voice how he was in Afghanistan with him. He shakes hands with Mary (“Wife?” the man asks him. “Not yet,” Mary answers herself.)

“We should have a pint now that I’m in town! Hear you been in the papers?”

_How much have you heard? Did you hear about the corpse I planted last year? Did they tell you I buried my best friend, the man they said was in love with me, the man they said I loved?_

Yes yes, he nods and smiles when he finally remembers the man, recollects his fierce laughter and how it helped him through several burning hot days in the Afghan sun. They turn to go and behind them in the fog they can still hear the man yelling after them:

“Brothers in arms, Watson! We were a good company!”

 

 

**II.**                 _**A Game of Chess**_

 

Sometimes Mary can’t stand his silence. She understands, better than most. She has lost people herself and she knows healing takes time. But sometimes, every once in a while, the silence becomes too depressing for her and she takes his face between her hands, kisses his forehead and begs him to come back to her. Then he smiles at her, kisses her back and promises to stay on the ground from now on.

Tonight’s one of those nights. She sits in the armchair like on a throne, class of wine balanced in one hand. She’s not drunk, far from it, but the wine has given colour to her pale cheeks and she is on a murder spree.

Their flat is filled with relics of her life. Vases, china figurines, cupids. Even the antique carved mantelpiece she would have brought with her if she could have.

She hears his footsteps on the stairs and waits for him to enter through the door. He stops short when he sees her small form in the firelight, light hair spread out around her, warm air full of the smell of her perfume, and she looks so demanding and powerful when she stares at him and says:

“I’ve had the worst day.”

He walks to her, nudges her bum a little so that she lifts herself up and he can sit on the chair and gather her in his lap. She sighs and buries her nose in his neck.

“Stay with me tonight.”

Don’t wander off in memories, she means. He doesn’t go out that often, maybe for a pint with colleagues every once in a while. But not often enough for her to ask him to stay in like he had any plans in the first place. It is the past she wants to keep him away from tonight.

“Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak! What are you thinking of? I never know what you are thinking. You are always so quiet.”

                      _I think we are in rats’ alley where the dead men lost their bones_

The thought comes to him so naturally he stops breathing for a moment. That’s not what he thinks, he can’t think that, he is not allowed.

“What is that noise?” she asks.

The wind under the door. It’s nothing.

“We should get it insulated. It’s going to be really cold in the winter if the wind can blow in the rooms like that.”

She nuzzles her nose deeper into his shirt, wine class forgotten between her fingers. He fishes it out gently and lowers it on the floor. Lifts his feet up so she is cradled completely on him, inside the security of his embrace.

“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing? It sounds like someone’s screaming! Someone’s outside!”

Nothing, it’s nothing, Mary.

He only says her name out loud when he wants to acknowledge it is truly her with him, not someone else.

“Nothing. Always nothing. Do you know _nothing_? Do you see _nothing_? Do you remember _nothing_?”

                      _I remember those are pearls that were his eyes_.

Another thought he is not allowed to have. He is not allowed to think any other eyes than the woman’s who is slowly falling asleep in his arms, not allowed to remember the pale dead eyes so clearly, least of all the bright colourful ones when he was alive. Pearls, yes, droplets of laughter from her like pearls on a string, small fragments of flawless priceless orbs. Not the pearls that dropped from his eyes at the grave, pearls he caught in his hands.

“Are you alive, or not?” Mary whispers into his shirt, both feet planted firmly across the border on the road to dreams.

_I’m dead, Mary. I can’t help it. Part of me died with him. Part of me came alive again with you. There’s still the small piece that is buried underground. He holds it in his hands, crossed on his chest. He will never let it go, because he is selfish, he swallowed it up, he swallowed_ me _up, and I didn’t even notice. He spit it out right before he died and held it out to me, just to mock me._

_Now he holds it forever in his hands six feet under._

 

But

The next morning Mary is back to her old self, lecturing on Shakespeare in popular culture at the university, returning home for the weekend only to fill her desk with essay papers and slam open every single copy of Master Will she has.

And when the evening is over and she has graded over three quarters of the papers in her enthusiasm, she comes to him when he is preparing dinner in the kitchen, wraps her arms around him from behind, whispers:

“What shall I do now? Should I chop the peppers, peel the onions?”

They are out of cumin seeds.

Her hair springs free from the rubber band, she shakes it at him, grabs a hold of the end and waves him goodbye with her golden hair before she rushes out of the door and down the street to the shops.

At dinner, she is still in a good mood and asks:

“What shall we do tomorrow?”

_Should we get married?_

She laughs, and for a moment he only concentrates on the pearls of sound that drop from her lips. For a moment he forgets the other pearls, always ready to burst free from his eyes.

They take a hot bath at ten, when everything in the building is quiet and they can hear the pipes droning, drops of water dripping from the tab. She blocks them with her big toe, tells him:

“We have plans for tomorrow. Dinner.”

He nods against her shoulder blades, gets up, makes tea. More hot water. He finds himself thinking that maybe if there is enough, he can wash away the memories.

Teacups in hand they settle close to the fire, play a game of chess and wait for sleep.

 

 

 

She is speaking speaking speaking.

Now she is drunk. But no one cares. Because they love her, know her, accept her and she doesn’t get drunk that often.

And when she does, she talks talks talks.

He is standing at the door to the sitting room, their coats over his arm, telling her gently time and again that they have to go.

And she talks talks talks.

Strings of words, strings of laughter, all like pearls in a row. All beautiful, no matter the subject. She has a gift of speaking of ugly things, unmentionable things and make the listener trust her, share themselves and they always let her give them advice.

She talks of pills, of demobilization, of marriage, of children, and every single word strikes home with him. She knows about those words, knows he has experienced them all on some level, but unlike others she does not talk about them with hushed tone and sideway glances.

She takes them out, shows them to everyone and stares down at the words until they lose their threat.

She is talking to him, and she doesn’t know it.

And it makes him feel wonderful. She cures him and she doesn’t even realise it.

When he finally gets her up and to the door, she takes the flowers, red tulips, from the vase in the hallway, gives them to Lou and suddenly transforms into Ophelia.

“Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night!”

 

 

**III.**           _**The Fire Sermon**_

 

In October, everything is brown and decaying with rain. It is the perfect time to walk beside the great river, for once empty of all the possible garbage it usually contains; beer cans, wrappers from Pret a Manger, Kleenexes, pizza boxes, fags, all reminders of the summer two years past are suddenly gone.

He stares into the swirling water from a bridge that, as the river itself, is for once empty of people. There is no one else to share his thoughts with. Sweet, sweet Thames, running smoothly in the background clearing his head, all thoughts of the day behind him forgotten.

_You run, you beautiful river, you run and make me forget._

For the moment, he forgets everything he was reminded of today. A boy hurt in a car accident (severe, fatal, nothing to be done, so sorry Mrs Spencer) brought in just after lunch. Somewhere under the gore – blood oozing out of the skin, burns and open wounds everywhere, both legs broken – he was confronted by the face of his fellow officers, each one in turn, looking directly through him, begging for help.

He tries everything anyway. All the standard procedures, he goes through everything with the determination of a soldier on a battlefield, sees the bones protruding from the torn legs, announces the time of death, and goes to the toilet to vomit up his lunch.

 

Standing by the river reminds him of home, the place he used to call one when he was a child. In Scotland, where they spent their summers. He used to fish there, take the biggest home to his mother, receive appropriate praise and have a scone and a cup of hot cocoa as a reward.

He wonders if there would be decent fish in the Thames, perhaps he could sit at the bank and actually catch something.

A rat slithers on the rocks from under the bridge, drags its belly on the ground. Smaller stones rattle like bones under its feet, and he jerks back and keeps on walking.

The volume of the cars horns and motors suddenly turn up several degrees, and he’s almost startled over the edge by a yellow sports car, honking its horn at him. The sound continues all the way to the other side of the bridge, echoing to the very end.

At St Paul’s everything stops, the only sound in the air the cooing of the birds.

 

A homeless man sitting wrapped in the fog on the steps of the church follows his steps as he walks past the church, round the corner and disappears. The man straightens his posture when he sees another figure in the fog, a tall man following the first some thirty steps behind him. For a moment, his milky eyes, blind with age follow the hand that drops change into the plastic cup by his feet, thanks the stranger, thanks God, blows them a kiss, and turns his eyes back to the receding man. Though blind, he is ever aware, always between two lives, always between life and death. He sees the man walk homeward, the evening hour bringing the sailor home from the sea.

He knows the dead, has walked among the lowest of them.

He has waited for this man to return. And now that he is back, he gropes his way up, stumbles, finding the lights above the stairs to the street still unlit.

Though the city is thick with fog, it is still an early hour. They won’t light the streetlamps for a few hours.

He spreads his hand against the wall, descends the steps slowly, a hand grasps his elbow to help him down and to the street.

“I can connect nothing with nothing,” he thanks the stranger.

He feels money pressed into his palm, fingers, smooth and pale in the darkness caress the broken fingernails of dirty hands.

“My people, we humble people who expect nothing.”

Money tight in his fist, he makes his way down the street, opposite direction from the two men, feels light and heat against his face, steps towards the burning carnage bubbling down below, descends the steps to the fumes and prattle and the hot burning burning burning of the fans pushing hot air underground. The ground swallows him and all the noises above go quiet.

They won’t light the lamps for a few hours.

 

 

**IV.**             _ **Death by Water**_

 

_Look at me now, John. You trusted me so, and now I’m only a ghost. I’ve lost everything. I’ve forgotten everything. It’s like I’m being carried by a strong sea, it picks me up, cradles me and eats my flesh to the bone. And it ages me, ages me so that you would not know me anymore. Skin and bones, that’s what I am now._

_Look at me, John._

_Remember me as I was, beautiful as I was. I was beautiful, they all thought so. “Beautiful, but lost.” They thought it, but never said anything. You did, you said it, you spoke the words out loud, you made me more beautiful than I ever was._

_And dangerous._

_Look at me, John._

_I’m dangerous, John. I’m like the East Wind. But you wouldn’t know about that. I’m the hurricane now, I’m the typhoon, I’m the statue of water approaching land, wiping everything out._

_Look at me, John._

_Look at me, John._

 

 

**V.**                 _**What  the Thunder Said**_

 

A torch flashes and lights up all the red and puffed faces waiting silently in the cold desert, eyes gleaming and blinking in the light of the torch. He shines it at each of them, looking for familiar ones, finding some, not recognizing the most. It is his regime, mixed with all the rest he couldn’t save, all the rest he saw die or heard cry out when the bombs hit in the middle of the night or read about in the obituaries.

There is no water here, only sand.

In the middle of the men sits a figure clothed in army gear, added with a hood to protect from the flowing sand. It is drawn back and he sees the black curls, piercing grey eyes, face red and puffy, sneering like all the others.

The shouting and the crying. He is dying, they are dying, we are all dying.

There is no water, and they’re all so thirsty.

The bombs go off, men fly up in the air, none scream while the bombs rip the life out of them, and he wakes up, sweaty, to the sound of Mary splashing in the shower _drip drop drip drop drop drop drop_ with the silent sound of the cicada and dry grass still singing in his ears, seconds before the bombs go off.

 

 

He knows she sees it as well, the third shadow walking beside them, hooded but recognizable. Recognizable to him. She doesn’t know, but wants to ask. Doesn’t dare.

Instead, she takes him travelling. She takes him to Jerusalem, and from there they go round Europe, through Athens, Vienna and back to London. They see black-haired women selling fruit in the markets, bats with their wings beating flying up the wall and out into the sun when they play the bell of the church tower, an abandoned chapel and decayed caves where no one else has been for decades.

To him, all cities are as unreal as London.

 

 

He sits by the shore fishing, hoping for the few edible trout that are said to reside in the muddy waters of the river Thames to take the bait. Doesn’t know if it’s true, doesn’t know if he is even allowed to fish, doesn’t think about the dozens of bodies pulled up every year. He wants to catch something after having sat there for hours unmoved.

No one at home to take it to now. No one but empty house, empty pages and empty words he uses to fill the void, uses to write about the man, to avenge the murder wrongly committed.

_By this, and this only, we have existed_ , he writes in his blog.

His fingers hover over the keys. He wants to write more, about the things they did, the things _he_ did, that are not found in obituaries, under seals broken by the solicitor dressed in black (the same one that came to him before, one of Mycroft’s men). Nothing found in his memories anymore, nothing in their empty rooms.

 

He sits upon the shore fishing, hoping to catch something.

He turns to look and he is standing there, honed and refined like phoenix purged by fire _a swallow, with his dark hair and coat, o swallow swallow my swallow_ begins to approach him slowly, moves steadily towards him, gravel shifting under his feet, the little stones rubbing against each other the only sound on the lonely shore.

Behind them, the London Bridge is falling down.

_Shantih shantih_ , he thinks of the old prayer he was taught in the desert. Is this the peace that passes understanding?

He stops, looks down at him. Something nibbles at the bait in the hook, the float sinking under the water.

“She died,” he says. “She died, and you’re alive.”

Behind them, the London Bridge is falling down.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for "He Do The Police in Different Voices" by Halloa_what_is_this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3307358) by [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon)




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